Yeager: An Autobiography

Our order was a gift. Unfortuanely it was shipped to the wrong address. A nother edition was not available. The vendor graciously refunded our order and promised to ship a replacement free if he could find one.

I've heard the name, but knew almost nothing about him until I read this book. He was famous for being the first pilot to break the sound barrier in an experimental aircraft when even scientists were unsure it was possible, but before that he was a combat dogfighter pilot in World War Two who had been shot down and even managed to get back to friendly lines after a long struggle, and went back to his old career when he decided to stop being a test pilot after too many near-fatalities, that he had unusually sharp eyesight and he attributed his survival to long piloting experience but also to sheer good fortune, and his accounts of rivalries between different test pilots and military officers. He also gives plenty of credit to his family and friends for their support and patience.

While there are plaster saint and heroes who have turned out not to be so heroic, there is nothing to indicate that Yeager was anything but real.

An old Norwegian proverb says heroism consists in hanging on one minute longer. I get the feeling from Yeager's story that he has done just exactly that more than once.
Yeager was shot down over occupied France during WWII. He was hidden by the French Resistance who led him over the Pyrenees and sent him off to Spain, across the mountains on foot. He returned to his fighter squadron in England and stayed to fight again in French and German skies.
War over, he returned home, decorated and commended, to become a test pilot for the newly formed Air Force. Yeager is the pilot who broke the sound barrier, paving the way for supersonic flight and the space program.
This is a book full of wild tales and heroic deeds. Hilarity and tragedy, like in life, ride side by side.
"He loved practical jokes," the authors write. "He went over to a little airport in Dayton and signed up for flying lessons. He took the course, taught by a really sharp-looking blonde, and when the time came for him to solo, a bunch of us went to watch. He took off, climbed above the field, then dove straight down, did a roll and barely missed the hangars, looped and spun, and turned everything loose. His instructor hid her face in her hands and almost passed out, but when she saw us standing in our uniforms and laughing like hell, she knew she'd been had."
Yeager comes across (because he says so) as an everyday kind of guy who loves to fly, was in the right place at the right time, and has had a lot of good luck. One can't help but notice that he worked hard, too, and was blessed with the gift of persistance.
Co-author Leo Janus was Houston bureau chief for the New York Times during the Apollo missions and received the American Institute of Physics-US Steel Foundation science writing award in 1981.
The book is amusing and informative. It reads like a roundtable riot with a bunch of flamboyant pilots. Only the title is its weak point -- it is unoriginal, predictable and boring.
Chuck Yeager is not.
Sunnye Tiedemann (aka Ruth F. Tiedemann)

Supposedly, Chuck Yeager has amassed a bad rap, but from his autobiography, it's hard to see why. The retired USAF General, who went from shooting down German jets in WWII to flying faster than sound before anybody else thought it possible, tells it like it is. While that won't engender warm feelings, Yeager was obviously a man even his rivals could trust.
The General writes of his humble Virginian origins. Enlisting in the Army as a mechanic, Yeager moved to the pilot's seat through a program intended to put more non-com's into flight-duty. Yeager displays a true pilot's nostalgia of the days when he writes lovingly of the obsolete P-39's he flew from Oroville (half the P-39's built went to the Red AF under lend/lease). Getting to England by 1943, Yeager upgraded to the legendary P-51...only to get shot down by a German FW-190. Smuggled into neutral Spain and then repatriated, Yeager returned to his unit and then began shooting down German planes, including the Me-262, the first operational jet fighter. Describing the crude though effective jet, Yeager shows how his mechanic's training and senses made the crucial difference: the early jets, built for high-speed, were vulnerable when approaching their runays for landing. Because existing jet engines responded slowly and unpredictably - with one engine spooling up much faster than the other - Luftwaffe pilots who tried to speed away from threats a low speeds often got sucked into mysterious and uncontrollable rolls. It was thus in that vulnerable state that Yeager hunted the vaunted jets.
After the war, and on the strength of his having been shot down, Yeager became a test pilot at the famed high-desert testing ground of Edwards AFB. Though a fighter pilot, it was again Yeager's mechanic's training that made the difference in his selection to pilot the supersonic X-1. Originally intended for flight by civilian pilots with high-pricetags, the X-1 was grabbed in 1947 by the newly formed US Air Force as a high-profile project whose success would set that service apart from the Army from which it had just been separated. Successfully taking the X-1 past the sonic barrier, and avoiding numerous would-be disasters, Yeager excelled as a fighter-pilot. Though rivals with test pilots in other services, it was with civilian pilots that Yeager reveals a true enmity, and for the period NASA pilots in particular. Paid for their work, these pilots were not likely to satisfy the minimal requirements of flight test - exploring and establish the outer boundaries of an airplane's performance. (Nor were they very good pilots, the General maintains, "proven" by the fatal mid-air collision between the B-70 and a NASA flown F-104 in 1965). Even the best civilian fliers are flawed pilots, exceling simply because of their readiness to test their flawed assumtpions, as "Wheaties" Welsh did at the controls of an F-100 prototype with a misdesigned vertical stabilizer.
Leaving flight-test, Yeager eventually rose to command of a squadron of F-100, a plane revolutionary in that - for its pilots - it inaugurated both missiles and mid-air refueling, and was guaranteed to weed out "weak sisters". Yeager's adventures include stints commanding units in Europe during the early cold-war days, Vietnam and Pakistan during the 1970's, as well as more flight test. He flew with Jaqueline Cochrane, the rich aviatrix who left the scent of perfume in any plane she flew, chatted with Andrei Tupolev and MiG pilots, and flew MiG-15's flown to the west by defectors. Thruough it all, he rarely rises to being judgemental, though he lets history do it for him - like the way the public largely ignored him and other test-pilots while lavishing attention on Merury pilots whose scientific contributions to flight test were not as great. At the same time, his ire towards the political forces that inevitably stretched their tentacles out at flight test becomes too great to ignore - such as when one lackluster African American pilot becomes the Kennedy Administration's designated astronaut.
"Yeager" is full of insights into the aviation's golden age as well as the Cold War, yet it remains one man's story, and like the Bell X-1, it's a story your strapped into until the end.

Yeager is an extremley exceptional man, He is the man who
have accomplish so much in his life, The first time I saw
his book in the store, I said to my self, what is this bald
old man doing in the front of the F-20 Fighter ?, I was curious
so I bought it.
At home when I read it, I just can't take my eyes away from
the pages, His courage is very exceptional, His love to Glennis
is something to be envy, but those thing doesn't made him a
Superman, He also have many flaws here and there, The Most
exciting part of his book is when he was in England figthing in
World war II, That's will show us how a young poeple like him and
his buddy deal with death as a fact of life, and how his fear and
excitement were mixed up in that period. His days as a Test Pilot
is also fun to read too, for me the most exciting part of this
period is not when he broke the sound barrier, but is the part
when he describe the daily life with his friend and his hang out
place.
Reading Yeager we read about a life of a hillbilly who happens
to be the righterous heir of the Right Stuff and he is the
one who will not die with a frown in his face

Legendary flying ace Chuck Yeager has put on paper not only his life, but his amazing character as well.
Since I was a child I was told the stories of Chuck Yeager by my brothers.One of whom was an aviator himself, and was in awe of this man.
When I read his autobiography, which is definitely one of the best books I've ever read, I felt a new kind of respect for the man. A man who was never given a college education, yet managed to be one of the greatest aviators and men in history. He overcame the odds more than a few times.
What touched me most about this book was it's honesty.He never embellishes the truth, and tells it like it is, always. The book may not be the best articulated book in history, but that is because that is not Chuck's way.
He recounts all the major events in aviation history with a style that reveals his passion, and his determination that if you are going to do something, do it right.Eloquently put by Chuck, do it balls out.
I most enjoyed his manner in the book, fun loving without losing sight of himself, his demeanour is that of a mischievous brother who'll stand up for what he believes in, no matter what.
This man is a role model and one of the world's finest heroes. Read the book and meet the man.

The word around the campfire is that Chuck Yeager is real SOB. Fortunately, I heard this long after I'd read this book and decided he was anything but. I still question this "SOB" assessment. General Yeager signs books, answers fan mail and cracks great jokes. This is the Chuck Yeager that comes across in the pages of this book, which is undoubtedly one of the best aviation yarns ever written.
Yeager had a way of being at the right place at the right time. Those places and times form the heart of this book, and the heart of the golden age of aviation itself. If there is a person most qualified to tell the story of how America transitioned from piston-fired aircraft into the supersonic jet age, Chuck is that person. Told in a loose, casual manner, the story whizzes along at mach speed, slowing only to allow "other voices" (friends, family, comrades) to further illustrate Chuck's highly adventurous life.
The book can be very funny, as when Yeager describes "topping" a tree with his WWII trainer's wingtip; it can be suspenseful, as when Yeager and others describe his nearly fatal flight beyond Mach 2. And the book can be sad, as when he illustrates the dangers of flight testing by revealing that streets at Edwards Air Force Base were named after fallen test pilots. Of course, it's all old news now - some of the lore has even decayed into clichés. But the magic of this book is that the moment you pick it up and start reading, it all seems new again.
Yeager bashers always seem to miss what this book hits on so well; it's not the things he did, it's the way he did them. This isn't the story of a war ace turned arrogant test pilot; this is the story of a country boy who inadvertently made a name for himself merely by doing what came naturally to him. We should all be so lucky.

"Yeager" is stuffed full of great stories. You probably know Chuck Yeager as the pilot who broke the sound barrier and that story, of course, is included. But there's a lot more.

There's exciting stories about World War II dogfighting. There's a story about Yeager running for his life behind enemy lines after being shot down. There's many breathtaking stories about flying high-powered aircraft to record speeds and heights. And there's crashes. Yeager acknowledges that he's lucky to be alive.

Yeager also throws in good stories about interesting people, like pilot Jaqueline Cochran and bar owner Pancho Barnes. There's a surprising story about spying on the Soviet Union and very funny one about golden trout (yes, the fish).

It's hard to believe one man experienced so much in one life. This is one book that I deliberate took my time reading, because I wanted to enjoy each story fully, without rushing on to the next one.

I really liked that the book includes "other voices" - short sections from Yeager's wife and colleagues that help provide extra perspective.

The book is in first person, but co-written by Leo Janos. While it's impossible to know how much Janos actually wrote, I suspect he deserves a lot of credit. Why? Because more than once does the book mention that Yeager, while a master pilot, had little grasp of basic English. "He could barely construct a recognizable sentence," recalls a general who knew Yeager in the Air Force.

I was fairly shocked by the poor treatment Yeager got from the military while he was risking his life flying experimental planes. For years, he got no promotion and his family had to crowd into a barely habitable shack. (Yeager eventually moved up and finally became a general near the end of his career.)

I was bothered a bit by Yeager's callous attitude toward the many people he saw die in his military service, but he makes it clear that it comes with the territory.

"I got mad at the dead: Angry at them for dying so young and so senselessly; angry at them for destroying expensive government property as stupidly as if they had driven a Cadillac off a bridge. Anger was my defense mechanism. I've lost count of the how many good friends have augered in [crashed] over the years, but either you become calloused or you crack."

One minor complaint: Sometimes Yeager uses aviation or military phrases that could use some translation: "Dead stick landing," aileron, "bird colonel." It's not a big problem, but a sentence here and there could have made things a bit clearer.

I was inspired by General Yeager's feats, like most post WWII brats, after seeing Philip Kaufman's "The Right Stuff." However, I became ever more impressed and rejoiced after reading his biography. It carried me right to his cockpit and flew me through Mach 1, 2 and 3 with deafening passion.
Chuck Yeager represents that generation of Americans who felt that making history was cooler than making money. He risked his life believing in what was best for his country without an ounce of hesitation. He enjoyed taking chances and learned from each flight to prepare him better for the next.
On top of all that, General Yeager is a patient, hard-working, honest, charismatic, altruistic, relentless, loving, humorous, and controversy-free man. The anecdotes shared with Glennis Yeager and those of colleagues and friends help sharpen the description of facts and sprinkle humor.
He is the true father of modern aviation.

Chuck Yeager was possibly the best pilot this country has ever produced. While in the USAF I spent a lot of time at Edwards AFB and Yeager is still revered by the test pilot community. He should have been selected for the astronaut program but was passed over because of the lack of a college degree. That issue should have had no impact on the decision. I knew he was fearless as a pilot, but the information about WWII was new to me and further illustrated Yeager's courage.

1. Chuck Yeager likes to use the phrase 'balls out' a lot. A whole lot. Perhaps indicative of some sort of testicular trauma in his youth?
2. Lots of references to 'waxing their tail' also. Not sure exactly what that means, but probably means getting behind another aircraft in a position to shoot it down?
2. He basically drank his way through his years in the Air Force, and hung out at a whorehouse in the desert while his wife raised the kids for many years. When he wasn't doing that, he was hanging with rich and/or famous people. I don't think his kids saw him much.
3. He flew an airfield full of aircraft, broke lots of records including the sound barrier, and got medals and honors up the ying-yang.
4. He's a happy guy, always smiling, and won't do anything that isn't a lot of fun. I mean fun, it's the main thing in life. Fun, fun, fun.
5. Many pilots were killed trying to keep up with or best him. Some people were hurt just trying to have fun with him. Lots of taxpayer money was spent having fun, too. Like helo flights up in the Sierra Nevada's to fish for golden trout, buzzing the old home town with new airplanes, stuff like that. Lots of fun if you're not the one paying for it, I guess.

Interesting book, however.

This is a pretty good autobiography. Not a five star in my opinion as a 5 star book review leads to a timeless classic that will be read over and over again. Chuck Yeager is an interesting character one that probably doesn't get his full dues since the age of NASA.

Breakdown Review:
Storyline: 4 out of 5 It would have been good to hear some input from his children what they thought of their old man. I find it out that they had no commentary on the book.

Writing style: 4 out of 5 stars. The book is written well and in such a way as to make the book difficult to put down. Nothing creative or insightful into the writing style.

Depth: 3 out of 5 stars. It is fairly shallow in places.

Entertainment/Education value: 4 out of 5 stars. The writing is extremely biased and opinionated which would not make this a very good book for instructional purposes. If believe what is written there as being accurate, however, it is written in such a way as only to describe the facts from the eyes of Chuck despite the comments from his friends,wife, and co-workers.

General "Chuck" Yeager and the breaking of the sound barrier will be forever inextricably linked. However, there was far more to his amazing life than that momentous day in 1947. There were his wartime efforts, both aloft and on the ground after he was shot down. Perhaps more than anything, it is the story of the journey of a simple country boy who grew into a man known across the world. An inspirational book and highly recommended.

Owen Zupp
Author: '50 Tales of Flight'
50 Tales of Flight: From Biplanes to Boeings

Yeager truly set the bar, and nobody has really touched it since. His writing brings to life the exciting times, the risks and absolutely gutsy flying, his love of all things aviation, his humor, and his vision. Us guys love him and my wife read the book (most of it) and said she was glad she wasn't married to the guy. How do you explain that the macho arrogant invincibility is what is NEEDED to be the awesome hero Yeager is? Certainly on my top ten list of guys I wish I could be!

This is a well-written book, whether the credit goes to Mr. Yeager or his ghost-writer. I liked the commentaries by Yeager's wife and his fellow pilots, and I loved the tough-guy prose that really was honestly earned. Yeager started out as a sergeant-pilot and ended by becoming one of the most famous USAF test pilots that ever was. You can't help but like the man.

Story of Chuck Yeager. Born and raised in West Viginia he has a huge accent. He enlists when a recruiter passes through his little hometown and he is off to Nevada to flight school where they lost 13 pilots in 6 months! After pay day they drink and gamble to relieve stress. He has 20/10 eye sight so he can see airplanes coming.

He is eventually sent to England to be a fighter pilot. He gets shot down and there is some adventure as he is helped to escape by the French resistance.

Upon return he is told he has to go back to the States, once a pilot is shot down he is not allowed to continue to be a fighter pilot, if he gets shot down again and recovered by the enemy he could be tortured to release information. Eventually Dwight Eisenhower allows him to stay. He shoots down a jet while he is flying a propeller plane!

After the war he is a test pilot in Ohio and eventually ends up out in the desert where he flys the X-1 and breaks the sound barrier. Throughout the book there is swearing and other people are allowed to chime in on things, occasionally it is just to repeat what has already been said.

He talks about his wife, his children, his friends, flying, his relaltionship with Jackie Cochran. He does the stunt flying in Jet Pilot (1957). Includes a list of dead pilots.

During Korea he is in Europe, he does get to test fly a surrendered Russian Mi6.

Later he helps train pilots for NASA, he is underwhelmed by their bravado, he feels they are not great pilots.

At one point he flys to Russia with Cochran and gets to take pictures, it is discovered who he is and the Russians ask him about flight advice, he says he doesn't know.

He is involved with Viet Nam and eventually becomes a one star General. At one point he helps out in Pakistan in 1971 and his wife helps distribute condoms to the Moslems, they would rather not use them as they associate the color white with purity, she is able to get colored condoms, orange is the preferred color of choice.

At times engaging, 16 pages of black and white photos at center of book featuring him with three presidents. Informative. A 12-page index.

My carrier in the Air Force started as Engine Mechanic in early 1950. Then started flying in 1950 on c-54's, moved on to a new airplane, the Douglas Sky Master C-124 as a Flight Engineer and ended up with over 10,083 hours logged. Having read General Yeager's book, twice, I still enjoyed reading it again. You don't have to be cracy to fly, but it sure helps. At one time in Yuma,Arziona, with the help of a Pilot and an outside power unit, we started ALL 4 engines at the same time. Didn't have the nerve to do it again. Even climbed the propeler once to win a bet, didn't do that again either, my stomache like to have kill me. General Yeager, I salute you for a great book. Write another one so that I can relive some of your past as a Pilot

Great autobiography of a great American. General Yeager's life story outlines an exciting time in the development of our space program and the furthering of our knowledge in aeronautics, including the breaking of the sound barrier, which to him was another day getting paid to do what he loved. Should be on a list of must reads for young Americans as is shows us that truly anything is possible, even for just a young country boy.

What a life Chuck Yeager has had. Countless contributions to aviation and the space race. This book tells a terrific story of a man who made the most of every break he got. Obviously an inspiration for anybody who thinks they should be doing what they love and not just what gives them a paycheck. A must read if you're a life enthusiast of any type.

Chuck Yeager personifies the title "American Hero." He lived life on his terms and flew every airplane that crossed his path. A double ace in WWII fighting the Germans. The 1st person to crack the sound barrier. Chuck Yeager lived life to its fullest and truly had "The Right Stuff!"

Need to know the definition of stud? Read this book and there will be no doubt in your mind as to the meaning. A must read for those of us who are legends in our own minds and need to be brought back down to earth....without "augering in". Read it!

This guy has lived just about the most exciting live I could possibly imagine. My adrenaline starts to surge in some parts. Yeager is the Michael Jordan of aviation...The Greatest, and that's that. I would love to meet him one day.

There is no question that Chuck Yeager was a good and courageous pilot. In addition to his place in the record books as the first to break Mach 1.0 in the Bell X-1, he has also managed, through good P.R. work to have everyone think he is the greatest pilot who ever lived. I have talked to people who have extensive contacts among the Edward AFB test pilots, and they said the general consensus is that, although Yeager, as I said, is good, he is most certainly NOT the "greatest pilot who ever lived". It is just that those who were better didn't have the knack for getting a lot of good press on their side.

For example, while many think Yeager's flying the X-1 with a broken

rib is cute or "gutsy", I think it is grossly foolhardy. Similarly, astronaut Frank Borman says Yeager also behaved irresponsibly in taking the NF-104 aircraft beyond its capabilities in trying for an altitude record. Yeager got the plane into a spin, almost killing himself as well as ruining the reputation of a fine aircraft. While Yeager's jealousy of the NASA astronauts is understandable (because they got more publicity and "goodies" than the Edwards crowd got), his taking cheap pot-shots at Neil Armstrong is uncalled for. He may have considered the Mercury missions, "not real flying", but then how does he explain that so many other test-pilots at Edwards such as Deke Slayton, Mike Collins, Joe Engle, even Neil Armstrong himself wanted to go over to NASA themselves and fly in space? This is because people with a better educational background than Yeager's could see that, beyond the Project Mercury "human-cannonball" flights, the future direction of spaceflight would lead to the Moon (i.e. flying the Gemini missions to rendezvous

and docking and the Apollo missions actually landing there, 250,000 miles from home). This would require "The Right Stuff" no less than what Yeager did.

Although his World War II and later aviation exploits are interesting, his descriptions of practical jokes and hard drinking binges, along with his stories about Pancho Barnes and Jackie Cochrane drag on and on interminably. I would have preferred reading more about his flying experiences, about what it is really like to fly high performance aircraft. I guess he figured that the average person wasn't really interested in this, but rather the "out-of-the-cockpit" antics of hot-shot pilot. By not giving the reader a view of the grandeur of aerospace exploration and mankind's first steps to outer space, I am afraid this book strengthens the view of the fellow I mentioned above that, had World War II not come along, Yeager would have spent his life as a coal miner in West Virginia.

i love this book.
if you think you have experienced some great adventures, you need to read this book.
Yeager is the definition of Adventure !!

he is also a very nice person who will tweet with you daily. his tweets are all time classics ! : - )
i have alto of respect for General Yeager.
this Nation is so fortunate to have men and women like him protecting our freedoms.

God Bless you and your family General Yeager !!

Tommy from Texas. (thundherr at twitter)